World Team Cup 2025: Juniors crowned champions while men’s and quad teams bring home bronze
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The Lexus GB World Team Cup Team has completed the 2025 BNP Paribas World Team Cup with three medals after the men’s and quad teams both won the bronze medals in their categories in Antalya, Turkey, adding to the World Team Cup title won on Saturday by the junior team.
It’s the second time in the 40-year history of the World Team Cup that Great Britain have reached the semi-finals of all four draws across the men’s, women, quad and junior categories, and the fourth time that a Great Britain team has won three medals in the same year at the wheelchair equivalent of the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup.
Starting off with the Lexus GB juniors team where Ruben Harris and Lucas de Gouveia won both singles matches in straight sets to earn the first of three possible medals for Great Britain’s wheelchair tennis teams.
De Gouveia and Harris beat the USA’s Sabina Czauz and Maximus Wong in Saturday’s final. De Gouveia set the tone for a dominant tie after claiming a 6-0, 6-3 victory over Czauz before Harris recovered from a break down in both sets of his match against Wong to wrap up a memorable 7-6(2), 6-3 victory.
Speaking on winning gold, Harris said, "It feels great. It still hasn’t properly sunk in yet that we’ve won and to be honest I didn’t think we’d go this far this year. With it being my last junior year this year, it’s great to finish on a high.
“It’s a great honour to represent your country. It’s my fourth year in a row doing world team cup - the team this year has been great and being able to watch the men’s, women’s and quads as well has been really good fun."
For Harris it’s a second World Team Cup gold medal in three years, having been part of the victorious 2023 team that beat the USA in a final that ended in a deciding doubles match.
Reflecting on the success of this year’s junior team, Erik Koers, Head of the LTA’s Wheelchair Performance Pathway, said, “We are hugely proud of the achievements of our junior team this week and the successes they have enjoyed against many of the very best young players on the international wheelchair tennis circuit.
“To win the junior title twice in three years, with just Ruben Harris as the common factor in both teams, is a great achievement and shows that the work that we are putting in as a performance pathway is paying dividends in inspiring the current generation of young players and, hopefully, future generations, too.”
De Gouveia and Harris won three deciding doubles matches earlier in the week as Great Britain beat Australia, Brazil, Germany and top seeds Belgium en route to the title. Meanwhile, teammates Matthew Knoesen and Will Barton, also part of the LTA’s National Age Group Programme alongside Harris and De Gouveia, also end the week having secured vital wins for the Great Britain junior team.
Moving on to Sunday’s action where, the Lexus GB men’s and quad teams edged out France and Australia respectively to bring the Brits medal tally to three at this year’s World Team Cup.
Ben Bartram and Dahnon Ward, both members of last year’s gold medal-winning team, beat France 2-0 in their bronze medal play-off this year.
Ward defeated Geoffrey Jasiak 6-3, 6-3 before Bartram beat Gaetan Menguy 7-5, 6-3 to wrap up victory over the French No.3 seeds, having beaten fourth seeds Brazil earlier in the week in the round-robin group phase of the competition.
Bartram, who now has two World Team Cup gold medals and one bronze medal from the last three years, said, “I’m really happy and very proud of all our efforts this week. It's definitely a very deserved bronze medal; the whole team have worked hard this week and this bronze medal shows how hard and how well we have worked.”
The bronze medal play-off for the quad team came down to a deciding doubles contest after Greg Slade beat Australia’s Finn Broadbent 6-4, 6-0 and Andy Lapthorne was narrowly edged out by Benjamin Wenzel 7-6(4), 6-4.
Paris 2024 Paralympic quad doubles silver medallists Lapthorne and Slade then beat the same two Australian opponents 6-4, 6-1 in the doubles to secure a first World Team Cup medal for Slade and Great Britain teammate Gary Cox.
Speaking on his bronze medal victory, Slade said, “I’m delighted to have come through today to win the bronze with the team and bounce back from the disappointment of the semi-final against Brazil yesterday. As a team, we really collected ourselves and went after it today and played some really good tennis.”
Sunday’s two winning performances also resulted in a first World Team Cup medal for Andrew Penney, who made his senior men’s World Team Cup debut alongside Bartram and Ward this week to become LTA Colour Holder No.330.
On Saturday, the women's team concluded their campaign with a fourth place finish after losing out 2-0 in their bronze medal match against France.
